Why Final Fantasy 7 Remake Takes Place Within Midgar, And Other Answers

Why did Square Enix decide to contain this first release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake in the city of Midgar? Why can’t you play as the lion yet? Fans have a lot of questions about this game right now, even before it officially comes out.

Producer Yoshinori Kitase and Co-Director Naoki Hamaguchi answered a few fan questions in this new Q&A session posted on Square Enix’s website. Kitase was asked why the game we’re getting contains only the Midgar portion, and he said….

When we first started the Remake project we had to make a decision on what elements from the original we absolutely had to keep in order for it to still be considered FINAL FANTASY VII.

We quickly decided that there were so many essential parts that fans would be upset if we had to cut out anything from the original…to make a single release viable the resulting game would have ended up being a digest of the original story, and we didn’t think that fans would be pleased with that.

Ultimately, we decided the best option for the project was to go for the highest level possible, with an expanded story. Having more than one game in the project allowed us to focus on keeping everything people loved from the original, but go into greater detail and more story depth than before.

Midgar is iconic to FINAL FANTASY VII, so we had to start the game here, and follow the story up to the main party’s escape from the city.

It was recently revealed that Red XIII makes an appearance in the back half of Final Fantasy 7 Remake but is not playable, at least in this chapter. Many fans were disappointed. Hamaguchi explains the decision:

To explain more about why we did not make Red XIII a playable character in this game, we felt that because he only joins the team during the latter stages, having him as a playable ally with full character growth potential would not be a satisfying experience for the player. So we decided to have him join for now, as a guest character instead.

More questions were answered in the Q&A, which can be read in full through this link. Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be out April 10 on Playstation 4.